An international team of flu experts will go to China this week to help with investigations into the deadly H7N9 virus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.
Chinese authorities said eight more people were infected with the new strain of avian flu that has killed 14 people among 71 confirmed cases, state news agency Xinhua said.
The new cases were in the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, it said.
No human-to-human spread of the virus has been confirmed.
“We’re still trying to find out more information about the reservoir (of the virus). From what we know at the moment, the poultry markets have been a focus of attention, but the fact-finding mission will be looking into this as a key target of its research,” WHO spokesman Glenn Thomas told a regular U.N. news briefing in Geneva.
The team going to China includes four specialists in areas such as emerging viruses, human-to-animal flu viruses and epidemiology, as well as an unspecified number of WHO staff, Thomas said.
Another WHO spokesman, Gregory Hartl, said it would be made up of eight people in all.
One of the points the mission wants to investigate is how some people seem to fight off the infection.
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